November 05, 2008

Election Night

Upon arrival at JFK, I head straight to an election night party at the home of Peggy Northrop; editor-in-Chief of Readers Digest, formerly of MORE Magazine. Leave it up to Peggy to have a gaggle of interesting and creative people at her party: Peggy is so multi-dimensional herself. In the course of just a few hours I chatted with: Peggy’s darling husband, a wrier (who makes amazing Pozole I must say), a choreographer, a painter, a gilded glass artist, a T.V producer, a few publishing gals, one who shares my experience of being married to a “conservative” man (gasp!)...

I leave Peggy’s house at about 10:30 EST and take a car to SoHo. Upon arriving at my apartment (that I get to stay in ALONE, I blissfully repeat) I hear the streets erupt with cheers. Obama must have just taken Ohio. It’s a done deal. Phew, we don’t need to endure another 4 years of a Republican president.

I’m exhausted but I can’t possibly sit in an apartment with no TV and celebrate this momentous time in history ALONE, right? So I make my way to a bar I have walked by a million times. A dive bar that I am determined to go to because I am sick (quite frankly) of the empty vibe and vapid people I tend to meet in “Chic” bar. This bar in SoHo, is more of a dive than I imagined. I was in the mood for a good ol’pub scene with a television but this place felt more like the basement of a bad cafeteria. Someone next to me smelled pretty bad but we chatted about the election regardless. Funny: you never know who you are going to meet in a dive bar. After chatting politics with a young boy standing next to me, I discover he is a window designer for Scoop NYC… (For those of you who don’t know Scoop you should! It’s a fabulous store that now has 14 locations) Very cool. My trip to New York , alone and on my own time has only just begun.